Honor, Huawei's offshoot smartphone manufacturer, has only come out with a couple of self-branded smartphones, but it's already, if slowly, locating proper foothold in the U.S. market, and that fact is not about to halt any time soon. Honor first launched a couple of devices from the Honor lineup stateside, including the high-end Honor 8 with dual cameras, and another model is to be added in the mix.
This time around, Honor will release another smartphone that also features a dual camera setup, without Honor 8's premium price tag.This smartphone is the Honor 6X, originally launched late 2016 in its home country, China, and is now headed for U.S. shores.
Huawei Honor 6X, A Cheap Dual Camera Phone
The Honor 6X was designed with filters in mind, Honor executives told The Verge, especially for the millennial generation. Today's Instagram-addled 18-25 demographic would definitely have a field day with the Honor 6X, though the smartphone's dual camera setup may not hold the same stellar configuration as the one in the Honor 8.
For comparison, each of the two cameras on the Honor 8 boasted 12 megapixels, one of which captures an image in color, and the other in monochrome. Both photos, once taken, would then be processed at the same time to deliver optimum image quality.
One of the sensors in the Honor 6X's dual cameras has 12 megapixels, but the other only has two. Honor executives say that while the Honor 8 is admittedly more capable of taking high-quality photos, the Honor 6X is better for filters since it's able to simulate a wide aperture via a special camera mode, designed to highlight subject's front and center as it detects depth-of-field.
While the Honor 6X's dual camera setup may not be as good as the Honor 8's, it makes up by being significantly cheaper. The Honor 8's starting price goes for $400, while the Honor 6X can be purchased for only $249.99, nearly 50 percent less than the better camera-spec'd handset.
Huawei Honor 6X Specs
Despite its fairly inexpensive price, the Honor 6X's internals aren't half bad. The screen, at 5.5-inch with a 1080p resolution, almost always belongs to above-average-tier smartphone entries, so that's a plus. The Honor 6X runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow off the bat, though the handset is headed for an Android 7.0 Nougat update come Q2 this year.
Powering it all under the hood is a 2.1 GHz Cortex-A53 octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 655 chip, hailing from a lineup of semiconductors owned by Huawei. There's also a Mali-T830 MP2 GPU for the phone's graphical performance.
There are two Honor 6X variants: one with 32 GB of internal storage with 3 GB of RAM, or one with 64 GB of internal storage with 4 GB of RAM. The phone's storage capacity may be bumped up to 256 GB via the SIM 2 slot.
To reiterate, on the back is a 12- and 2-megapixel dual camera setup, and on the front is an 8-megapixel camera for selfies. There's also a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, which is a feature not usually present on budget handsets. Despite its glitz, the Honor 6X still unfortunately comes with the aging microUSB 2.0 port instead of USB Type-C.
Pricing And Availability
The Honor 6X costs $249.99 for the base version with 3 GB of RAM, hitting U.S. shelves starting Jan. 15, but those who want to preorder the device may do so starting Jan. 4. Honor 6X is slated to make the smartphone available to other countries in the future as well.
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